Uttar Pradesh Quiz: Formation of Uttar Pradesh and the Separation of Uttarakhand

The province known as the United Provinces since 1937 was renamed Uttar Pradesh when the Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950, and the new name kept the familiar initials UP.

Under the Uttar Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2000, the thirteen hill districts of the Kumaon and Garhwal divisions were separated to form Uttaranchal, the twenty-seventh state of India, on 9 November 2000, with Dehradun as its interim capital and the High Court at Nainital.

Article 3 allows Parliament by law to form a new state by separating territory from any state, by uniting two or more states or parts of them, and to increase or diminish the area of a state or alter its boundaries or name.

Pant headed the government of the United Provinces from 1946 and continued as the first Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh after the renaming in 1950.

The Ceded and Conquered Provinces were reorganised in 1836 as the North-Western Provinces, with Agra as the seat of government, and Awadh was attached to the same administration in 1877.

The three states came into existence within a fortnight: Chhattisgarh on 1 November 2000 from Madhya Pradesh as the twenty-sixth state, Uttaranchal on 9 November 2000 from Uttar Pradesh as the twenty-seventh, and Jharkhand on 15 November 2000 from Bihar as the twenty-eighth.

The agitation for a separate hill state turned violent in 1994, and the firing on demonstrators at Khatima and Mussoorie, followed by the incident at Muzaffarnagar on the night of 1 and 2 October 1994 when marchers were going to Delhi, gave the movement its martyrs and brought the demand…

Before 2000 the undivided Uttar Pradesh returned eighty-five members to the Lok Sabha. When Uttarakhand was created, five seats went with the hill districts, leaving Uttar Pradesh with eighty, still the largest number for any state, along with thirty-one seats in the Rajya Sabha.

A Bill under Article 3 can be introduced only on the recommendation of the President, and the President must refer it to the legislature of the state concerned to express its views within the period specified.

The Allahabad High Court, one of the oldest High Courts in India, sits at Allahabad, now Prayagraj, and has a bench at Lucknow created when Awadh's own Chief Court was merged into it.

Uttar Pradesh has a Legislative Council, the Vidhan Parishad, of one hundred seats, the largest in the country, alongside a Vidhan Sabha of four hundred and three elected seats.